Allender - God loves sex: an honest conversation about sexual desire and holiness

2014 by Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III

Published by Baker Books

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakerbooks.com

Ebook edition created 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-2108-7

Unless otherwise noted, quotations of the Song of Songs come from Tremper Longman III, The Song of Songs , New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). Used by permission. The translation has occasionally been altered.

Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Authors are represented by Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com .

Its rare to find a Christian book about sex that is real and helpful and honest. God Loves Sex is all of that and more. Im grateful the authors tell the truth about a subject so complex and beautiful and ultimately give us hope and guidance to redeem the power of intimacy in our own lives.

Donald Miller , bestselling author of Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Wise. Playful. Sacred. Surprising. This is not your average Christian book on sex. This is something betterand it is going to bring clarity, healing, and hope to a lot of people. I loved it from the first chapter.

John Eldredge , author of Wild at Heart

I have always loved the Song of Songs, but this book gives me a rich picture of how it can help us to something deeper in our marriage. A really good book. So healing!

Stasi Eldredge , author of Captivating and Becoming Myself

In a world that has gone sexually insane, where sex most often lives in confusion, perversion, compulsion, guilt, and shame, it is wonderful that Allender and Longman use the Bibles sex song to restore sex to its original created beauty. Along the way, with refreshing and liberating honesty, they break the churchs code of sexual silence and offer us sex wisdom that only comes when we stop being afraid and start listening to the God who fashioned sex for his glory and our good and who meets us in our sexual struggles with remarkable grace.

Paul David Tripp , author of Sex & Money : Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That Satisfies

God Loves Sex is a rare gift from a masterful joining of an adept Bible scholar and a prominent Christian therapist, author, and professor. With the use of both commentary and fiction, Longman and Allender invite us into the ancient, erotic love poems found in Song of Songs. The Song invites us to desire, enjoy, risk, struggle... and to consider how our sexualityholy and broken, beautiful and bentis used by God to draw us deeper into his love. This book literally took my breath away.

Rose Madrid Swetman , lead pastor, Vineyard Community Church, and regional leader, Vineyard Northwest

Its precisely because God loves sex that the Enemy hates itturns it into a Mirkwood of entangled abuses and heartbreaks and compulsions, a dark place better skirted than braved. Enter Dan and Tremper, old comrades tenderly fearless enough to open sexuality to a little light and air, to name our shames in a way that relieves us of them and woos us to godly desire and play. Their machetesthe Bible at its most scandalously sexual, and professional psychology (fictionalized in Malcolm!) at its most scandalously Christian. There is probably no one who cannot find herself or himself in this book and therein find new hope.

Esther L . Meek , professor of philosophy, Geneva College

To Alice and Becky
You are the love of our lives

How beautiful your love, my sister, my bride!

How much better your love than wine

and the scent of your oils than spices!

Song of Songs 4:10